Various tourniquet devices that use a wide variety of clamping and/or pneumatic means to apply pressure to various limbs on the body have been attempted. However, prior attempts at cessation of hemorrhage from the major blood vessels of the body at or below the inguinal area have not been no completely successful, especially if attempted on gross battle-field wounds such as leg amputations due to anti-personnel mines or high velocity bullet percussion wounds to the lower extremities. Quite often, such wounds do not provide a satisfactory compressible site to stop arterial hemorrhages and require occlusion of the abdominal descending aorta to cut-off the blood supply to the wound in order to protect the patient's life.
However, compressing the abdominal descending aorta is a difficult exercise. One of the major obstacles to providing an effective portable abdominal aortic tourniquet is in providing a focused compression force over the targeted area on the abdomen to achieve aorta occlusion. Typically, most tourniquets apply a constricting force around the circumference of a limb or over a broad area to reduce total blood flow through the limb. Such a broad application of force is ineffective to reduce or occlude blood flow through the descending aorta proximal to the bifurcation in the abdomen due to the deep location of the aorta in the body. A strong focused pressure is required to reach the descending aorta and reduce blood flow. Prior inventions fail to show or disclose a technique for focusing a compression force in the abdomen to operate as an abdominal aortic tourniquet.
For example, US Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0191881 A1 (Amisar et al.) shows a tourniquet that includes a pressure source and a selector leaver attached to a cam to facilitate manual selection of a designated pressure. This tourniquet is designed to apply pressure around a limb. There is no teaching in the patent that this device would be effectively useable as an abdominal aortic tourniquet. Further, the air bladder is not a directed air bladder that would focus the compression force, but is rounded to wrap around the limb and spread the pressure force over a broad area. Such a broad application of constricting force is unusable if intended to reduce or occlude circulation through the descending aorta for a non-compressible arterial hemorrhage in the abdominal region.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,459 (Lee) shows an inflatable balloon for use in a tourniquet. The patent discloses a manual pump for inflating the balloon. There is no disclosure of the balloon having a directed shape for focusing a compression force, or that the tourniquet is in any way designed to work as an abdominal aortic tourniquet. This tourniquet is representative of a vast majority of pneumatic prior art tourniquet devices which completely fail to address the specific problems associate with providing an effective abdominal aortic tourniquet
U.S. Pat. No. 6,884,254 (Brooks) shows a tourniquet system that includes a leverage assisted clamp means for tightening the strap around a limb. This patent is representative of a large section of the prior art that uses mechanical means, as opposed to pneumatic to provide a constricting force around a limb. Again, such devices fail to provide the directed compression force required to restrict blood flow through the descending aorta.
Therefore, what is needed is a portable abdominal aortic tourniquet that can be rapidly applied under field conditions that includes a means for tensioning the tourniquet upon a patient rapidly and with sufficient force to ensure abdominal aortic occlusion.